Coastal eager to remove FBS matchups

Coastal Carolina coach Joe Moglia has not muted his opinions whenever he’s been asked about playing a guaranteed-money game against a college football heavyweight that most FCS-level programs add to their schedule for a financial boost.

He reiterated his stance at his news conference this week in advance of the Chanticleers’ road game Saturday at South Carolina, which comes at a particularly inconvenient time for a Coastal team likely awaiting an NCAA FCS playoff game next week.

“No, I’ve said that before, I’m not a big fan of the game at all,” Moglia said.

And for that reason, it may be the last time for a while that the Chants play an FBS-level opponent.

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Coastal athletics director Hunter Yurachek said the school has gotten out of its contract to play at Kent State in 2015 by having Delaware State agree to take on the contract. By finding an alternative opponent for the Golden Flashes, Coastal did not have to pay a penalty to get out of that game. Meanwhile, Coastal and Georgia Southern, which is elevating to the FBS level, mutually agreed to void their contract to play in 2015.

Yurachek confirmed Coastal is also working with officials from Clemson and another school to find a arrangement that would allow the Chants to take the Tigers off their schedule for next season, though nothing is official in that regard yet.

Those were the only FBS games for which Coastal had future contracts.

“Coach has a philosophy, and it’s the philosophy that he believes is going to take us to our ultimate goal of becoming a national champion in football,” Yurachek said. “So we’re working towards that philosophy with the schedule piece, and we’ll continue to evaluate those games. ...

“He does not like those games and does not think it’s of value to our program to participate in those because the potential of getting beat up and banged up, that could hurt you during the course of your journey to win a national championship.”

Moglia elaborated on why he feels as he does — especially this week.

He referenced the 35-percent difference in available scholarships for FBS programs (85) relative to FCS programs (63), the significant advantage in funding and facilities at the larger schools and the fact that this game is not only against an FBS-level team but one ranked No. 12 in the country.

“This particular game you’re also playing an elite college football team that’s loaded across the board,” Moglia said. “... The FCS as we know has to be in a playoff, and depending on what goes on in the playoffs, you could have to play five games. So you finish a game like this and then we assume we’re going to be in the playoffs — we don’t know who were going to play against, we don’t know what’s going to happen in the first round — but then you’ve got one of the toughest parts of our schedule kind of coming up. So none of that works out opportunely.”

The advantage of a game like this is largely financial. Coastal will receive $375,000 for traveling to Columbia to play Saturday, and the Chants have cashed in on similar and even greater paydays in years past while playing the likes of Penn State, Kent State, Clemson, West Virginia, Georgia and Toledo.

Removing such games from the schedule means that money would have to be made up elsewhere.

“We’re going to have to obviously address it other ways to generate revenue, whether that’s through ticket sales, donations, additional sponsorship sales. That will all come in time,” Yurachek said. “As we sell more tickets, we can sell more sponsorships. It all kind of goes hand in hand.”